Tae Kwon Do Tournament

Saturday was the 24th Annual American Jung Do Tae Kwon Do and Judo Championships in Sheridan Wyoming. We took eight students to the tournament. Only two are tournament veterans.

Our students did an exceptional job considering that most of them have only been taking lessons for the past five months. We have one student who has only been in class for three weeks. We took one black belt, one yellow belt and six white belts. The school as a whole came home with 12 medals, 4 golds, 3 silvers and 5 bronzes. All the students but one came home with a medal.

We had our only girl competitor freak out over the sparring competition and no way was she going to do that. She was afraid of getting hurt. In class she spars with the boys and wins so we were so shocked that she freaked out. Jennifer even tried to talk to her. No dice. Will have to work on the confidence part. Our next tournament is in March. Jennifer and I were both told by our instructor that we are competing in the next tournament too. We will be doing weapons and board breaking for sure.

Our brand new student came home with a gold medal in sparring, he is on cloud nine. He didn't get one in forms. I stressed to the kids that getting a medal in forms is hard and we kept reminding him that he has only been in three weeks, the others have been in class for months.

They will bring their medals to class on Tuesday and I will take a group photo to get in the paper. Our black belt didn't get a medal. He assumed that he would medal anyway.

In other tournaments he does win, but this time he didn't come to class for the whole month of September. He just assumed that he would medal. He was getting a bit cocky about this and he got knocked off his pedestal.

Gary, Jennifer and I were busy judging. One of our other students came to judge, he missed most of the summer in class and didn't feel ready to compete. He wanted to learn the judging side of it. I think he had a good time, at least he said he did.

Now our students will be working hard on their belt promotion test on the 15th. We have most of our school eligible to test, just a matter of them turning in their paperwork and fees. We have two students on track to get black belts in March.

I was able to take candid photos of our students before competition started. The only bad thing with us judging is that I don't have my photographer (Jennifer) to get photos of them competing. I will have to ask the mothers if I can get copies of their photos. I want to make a poster for advertising for the school.